


Provenire

by serpentinerose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Gabriel is a good brother, Gen, Super gen, seriously just a little drabble, the archangels are shitty brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 21:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20316226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serpentinerose/pseuds/serpentinerose
Summary: People were born. Angels were created.Castiel enjoyed his existence very much, and he loved his big brother, but his family was not a happy one.





	Provenire

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my drafts for 4 years, so I finished it instead of working on my doctoral dissertation.

Being born was the most peculiar feeling, if one were fully conscious during the process. Most humans weren’t, coming out of their mother’s body screaming and afraid of the world, tiny limbs pink and delicate and flailing, striving to return to the warm, watery cocoon of safety and nothingness that they had known for the past nine months. The outside world was cold and unexplored, filled with strange sounds that they could not make out and sights that they could not yet see, anchored perhaps solely by the smell and touch of their mother, the gentle cadence of her voice lulling back some semblance of comfort into their terrified minds.

For an angel, being born was different. Waking up for the first time was a little like swimming up to consciousness from the depth of oblivion, a long, languid stretch and then sudden awareness bombarding him from every direction. The senses were willing receptacles for every stimulus, and he was floating in a kaleidoscope of sensations: touch, and light, and warmth, and  _ being _ . He knew, then, that he was not alone, that there were others like him, and he felt a sense of belonging that filled him with breathless ecstasy.

He had never met Father, but he knew, with neither doubts nor needs to prove it, that He existed. And he knew, inexplicably, that he was one of the last to be born, that his name was Castiel and his destiny was to carry out his Father’s Will in all the worlds, and that his duty was to Heaven and its Host. Not yet, but soon, when his tiny body had grown enough and his wings no longer the tiny puffs of white light on his back. All this, he knew, bestowed on him by Father, and he was content; for he, a creature made of joy, made  _ for _ joy, had been born, and the garden of Joshua was wondrous, and life was so very, very wonderful.

The seventh day of his life marked an event stranger than most in the very short span of time he had been aware. Upon awakening from slumber—soon enough he would grow out of this dependency on brief junctures into unconsciousness—he was greeted with a face, vastly different from his own and yet strangely familiar, as if he had looked upon this face a thousand times over. The essential structures were the same—the presence of such essentials as eyes and nose and mouth, but arranged in different spaces, tilted and straightened and enlarged and minimized so that a single look was sufficient to distinguish the two of them. This creature, another angel, was already grown, his limbs longer than Castiel’s own and his torso bulkier, so that he towered over the newborn angel with ease. The rich plumage of his wings captured Castiel’s interest the most, however, translucently golden and bronzed and interspersed with a splash of burnished crimson, majestic and shimmering as they glided through the air between them. He was sunlight condensed, his body solid and so very real and made entirely of the brightest wavelengths, and in his awe, Castiel let the elder angel’s arms wrap around his body, effortlessly plucking him up from his perch on a placid willow and cradled him close, breathing his name over and over like a litany. He found himself grabbing a handful of the other’s deep golden hair, marveling in the softness of the strands beneath his fingers.

The other angel smiled, a wide, mischievous grin that seemed utterly out of place on such a being worthy of reverence, and yet Castiel could not imagine it any other way; surely the only way for him to smile was to replicate that exact twist of the corner of the mouth, that tiny crinkle on the edge of his eyes, sweet and warm as sunlight. Then came his true voice, high and lilting as a lark, and the name  _ Gabriel _ seared its way into his mind, and he knew that this was his big brother—he could feel that bond now, sweet and steady between them, thrumming with a thread of energy that had formed without his noticing it. 

He knew that Gabriel would take care of him and protect him, and one day, he, too, would be able to return the favor.

* * *

Being with Gabriel was infinitely preferable to spending his time in the vast loneliness of Father’s world. Castiel very quickly learned that his brother disdained of the strict order of Heaven and the Host, though his high station as an archangel placed him very near the top of the hierarchy. He had experienced with his own eyes the reverence the other grown angels—even the mighty seraphs!—expressed toward his big brother as they strode hand in hand through the Garden of Joshua, Castiel still too small to properly use his wings. He accompanied Gabriel everywhere, a shy, mute presence hiding behind his brother’s robe, much to the amusement of the Host, but a heated glare from his brother would silence the unkind snickers, and the warmth of his brother’s fingertips on his shoulder never failed to chase away the redness in Castiel’s eyes.

There were other angels that he knew by name. Michael. Lucifer. Raphael. All archangels, all immensely powerful and fully matured with wings as majestic as those of Gabriel and not in the least bit less beautiful. They were older than his caretaker, with Michael the oldest and most powerful of all. He liked Michael just fine, he supposed; the Prince of Heaven was a fair and excellent commander, but there was a stiffness to his mannerism that always set Castiel on edge. Lucifer was much the same—proud and haughty, and oh-so-beautiful, rapturously so, light itself condensed, the Morningstar. Castiel dared not gaze fully at him, and he hid often behind Gabriel’s back, daring only to peer out skittishly as his older brothers conversed. He liked Raphael, who was calm and quiet and seldom commanded, preferring instead to heal and create and fix. He really liked Raphael, but he did not think Raphael cared much for him, and so he stayed away. Gabriel said that they were all brothers, all of them, but he didn't know if the others knew that.

Sometimes, when Gabriel wasn’t busy being Father’s Messenger, he would devote entire days to Castiel, flinging both of them through the clouds with his glassy wings wide open. The heavens stretched out before them, boundless and utterly empty but for the scant guards posted regularly throughout the place. It was beautiful, this kingdom, but Castiel could not help but grow bored at the cold, endless perfection, and one day he hesitantly reported as such to Gabriel, fully expecting scorn and anger from the older angel.

Instead, Gabriel had thrown back his head and laughed, loud guffaws that were entirely undignified and yet ineffably pure. “I’d thought as such, little brother,” he finally explained when Castiel’s eyes could not possibly widen any more than they currently were. “It just never occurred to me that you might be feeling the same way.” And then he crouched down, fixing his gaze directly at Castiel’s own, and, in a conspiratorial voice, whispered, “If you won’t tell anyone, I’ll take you somewhere different. Somewhere you’re not supposed to be, not just yet.”

Could Castiel do anything but fervently promised his silence, eyes shining with rarely found excitement and hands clutching at Gabriel’s robe as if to ensure that his brother would not fly off without him? Gabriel took him far below the lowest layers of clouds, so that Heaven spun out of sight and reduced to a bare silver line behind the grayish clouds. The atmosphere felt different now, though it posed no strain on his heavenly body in the least—there was something in the empty space surrounding him, and Gabriel’s muttered “Air, Castiel, composed of oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen and a million other stuff” was enough to satiate his curiosity, the names of the elements immediately ingrained in his memory along with their particular function. 

When they landed, Castiel’s bare feet brushed over the surface of hard rocks and slippery green moss, but he had no names for such things and gazed about in absolute astonishment. What is a world to an eternal being who exists nowhere and everywhere at once? Words and forms trickled into his consciousness, an unbroken stream from his brother’s own, and his vocabulary became a “forest” and “river” and “creatures” and everything he had never known, everything that he now knew. He thought that Gabriel’s eyes were not sunlight but honey, an unbidden thought as cherubic fingers prodded fearlessly into the wondrous homes of his Father’s creations, and sweetness filled his tongue and confirmed his suspicion. He knew wind now, and birds, Honey, indeed. 

He was overwhelmed by the sight of white clouds overhead, sky the deepest blue—he wasn’t sure how he knew the color to be blue, or that there should be colors at all, but he knew—and beneath him a nest of soft, mossy grass. He could hear the tiny ant’s light footsteps, the chirping song of the nightingale, the gentle, calming whoosh of wind through leaves, a deep emerald in color and as large as his head; his fingers, in this body shimmering with the lights of distant stars, clenched involuntarily at the ground, grabbing and stroking the velvety grass over and over, delighted and awed at the world his Father had set out before him. A forbidden world, but a world nonetheless. 

The shoreline stretched out for an eternity, which was about the only comparison Castiel knew to make. His brother gazed into the distance, his golden light infinite. Castiel knelt on the smooth rocks, incorporeal feet dipping into the water, registering the sensation of wetness with absolute delight. Below him, a gray fish swam listlessly, and Castiel reached out with one foot to stroke it, marveling when it darted away from his approach.

“Don’t step on that fish, Castiel. Big plans for that fish.”

And so he did not.

* * *

It took him a while to figure out that his closeness with Gabriel was not natural. The other archangels did not have charges that they must watch over every minute of every day. In fact, Michael and Lucifer spent most of their time—another concept that he recently discovered—bickering, and the force of their clashes often left the younger angels cowering beneath the lightning that Michael summoned. Castiel did not understand the source of their discord, but Gabriel only shushed him gently and covered him in his sturdy wings. 

Those were some of Castiel’s favorite memories, being near the thunder and lightning, and yet utterly, inescapably safe.

Lucifer’s moods only worsened over time, and with them, Michael’s. Castiel still did not understand. The other angels did, he suspected, although no one deigned to explain anything to him. No one really saw him but Gabriel, and he was content to keep it that way. Sometimes he was lonely, of course, but his wings had grown larger now, white and pure and unmarked, and he could get away to the forbidden world when the heavens became too stifling with loneliness. Sometimes Gabriel accompanied him, as well, and the two spent multiple eternities lazing on top of still water, their feathers floating undisturbed, their feet nibbled lightly by curious fish and curiouser water plants. His brother taught him the rules of the world, some entirely fabricated on the spot, but they became rules nonetheless, and Castiel learned hungrily, gulping down the knowledge and relishing it all in his quiet, private way. 

And that was all Castiel asked for in the world.

* * *

One day, Michael and Lucifer feuded, yet again. Something was different about this time because the other angels joined in, his other brothers and sisters, fire raining from above and rising from below, and the clashes became so loud that Castiel covered his ears and screamed until he was whisked away by a gasping, bleeding Gabriel.

Castiel continued to scream, and his big brother smothered him in his chest, Gabriel’s blood gushing forth from wounds all over his body, Grace spilling out of his torn and singed wings, and Castiel wailed the unending, incomprehensible wail of fear and pain.

That day, Lucifer Fell.

All around Castiel, the host of heaven Fell, and he knew everything had changed.

  
  
  
  



End file.
